This blog is about spiritual awakening, maps and stages, the blinding effects of our strong momentum/conditioning (karmic propensities), view, realization, experience, etc. If you're new here, I recommend going through the 'Must Reads' articles (see sidebar). For discussions you are welcome to join the Awakening to Reality Facebook group

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LeanderThanks for all the answers, it means a lot to me and makes it a lot more bearable already.

@An Eternal Now: ive read the first link. Suzanne Segals story and the two types of nondual contemplation after I AM.i
have to admit that just reading the contemplation spikes some panic in
me because it implys i have to go further into no-mans land. Things like
"theres no seer, just seeing". it makes me feel even less existent. As
if thats the missing nail in the coffin to destroy me once and for all.

Fear
and panic arises due to the misconception that 'I' have existed in the
first place and has to dissolve. This is a misunderstanding. There is no
'I' behind the seeing which is none other than colors, no 'I' or
'hearer' that is behind the hearing which is none other than sounds.
Nothing needs to dissolve, it is seen through and realized to be always
already the case. You think that hearing and seeing is the job of an
agent, a perceiver, a doer, and you are some detached perceiver, but in
reality scenery sees and sound hears. The agent never was. It only
appears to be real, and while the delusion is there, the appearance is
very strong and hypnotic. There is a constant self-refencing, a tiresome
and tedious process of referencing every experience back to a presumed
agent out of ignorance, from 'just the seen' to 'I see'. The
seeing/colors, hearing/sounds, action/activity happen first, followed by
an unnecessary self-referencing to an imaginary agent. This sense of
being a self, an agent, a perceiver, a doer, can however be challenged,
investigated, and seen through. With the illusion seen through, the
process of self-making naturally stops, it is not so much that a self is
destroyed as it was never truly there. Nothing is lost, and in losing
an illusion you 'gain' the world.

The old Zen koan goes:

The man sitting atop the hundred foot pole:Though he's gained entry, this is not yet the real.Atop the hundred foot pole, he should step forward:The universe in all directions is the whole body.

Nothing is destroyed any more than seeing through the belief in the
real existence of santa claus actually destroys some santa claus. You
just wake up to reality. Oh, life is happening brilliantly without a
center, without the need for the fiction of a center, and life is much
more marvellous, wondrous, alive, boundless and free than the tiresome
and fearful holding and grasping on to an unnecessary self-contraction
and imagined entity and all the related sufferings. It's like holding on
to hot charcoal and yet strangely not willing to release it due to fear
of the unknown. Once the illusion is seen through and released there is
a sense of freedom, release and fearlessness in facing life
(see: https://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2018/08/fearless-samadhi.html
)

Then there is no fear as this is realized to be always already
the case. The notion that 'I' had existed at the center, experiencing
and coordinating everything is unnecessary and unfounded. The absence of
self and agent is also experienced positively as everything is
brilliantly alive and self-luminous, the quality of 'witnessing' which
was once seen as a background observer now is felt as a quality of
everything revealing itself to itself. The seeing is seen-seeing, colors
and sounds and sensations are just felt vividly where they are instead
of being experienced from some vantagepoint of self. It is not a static
state of detached uninvolvement in life, there is complete engagement
and intimacy in all actions, chop wood, carry water.

What is
called pure consciousness experience becomes effortless and natural:
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/library/topics/pce.htm , and in this
state there can be no dissociation. If you do not experience the aspect
of intense luminosity then joy and liveliness will not be felt (see:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-importance-of-luminosity.html
) The intimacy is not the intimacy of two entities meeting each other
but the sense of gaplessness, when hearing a sound the sound is as if
'you', closer than your breath, when seeing the blue sky the blue sky is
as if 'you', closer than your heartbeat. Everything is alive and vivid.
So how can there be dissociation and derealization?

Yet,
the organism that hasn't awakened and the awakened organism will both
automatically recoil when it unknowingly touches a red hot fire.

The recoiling as a pure bodily function and activity will happen
spontaneously without self-referencing. It is necessary and useful for
the survival of this organism, be it awakened or not. It does not come
with the kind of self-contraction and fear and grasping before
awakening.

Some people will have glimpses of this 'spontaneous happening' even
without realizing anatta. For example they may wake up from sleep and
experience the body coughing by itself, too fast before the sense of
self kicks in as they just woke up (the structures of subject/object,
identity, selfing, takes some time to kick in after arousing from
sleep). But then the sense of a detached observer then quickly kicks in,
and there's a sense "oh I was just watching this thing, the body is
doing its thing and I'm not the doer, I am the watcher". This is an
experience of non-doership but NOT what I call realization of anatta,
therefore dissociation still happens. Most people who have certain
glimpses of non-self are talking about an experience of non-doership,
which is not necessarily a non-dual experience, or a peak experience of
PCE, but even if he/she experiences a PCE it is still not what I call
the realization of anatta. Even one realizes non-dual luminosity as
always undivided, they may still fall into the case of Thusness Stage 4 -
subject/object non-division rather than realizing true anatta or
no-subject of Thusness Stage 5 - Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Enlightenment

As I often said (elsewhere) - for 8
years now, there has not been the slightest sense of agency, an agent,
or subject/object division in any situation. Non-doership, no agent, and
no subject-object division (vivid non-dual luminosity) all at once.
Spontaneous and effortlessly so as a natural state. The aspect of no
agent must be clear, not just non-doership, and not just subject/object
non-division or non-dual luminosity either.

Like seeing a picture puzzle, once you see it and the insight stabilizes, you can't unsee it even if you want to.